The problem is not knowing what is deductible — most electricians know perfectly well. It is that the evidence arrives in six unconnected places and reassembling it happens too late to do properly.
| Where the spend happens | What form it arrives in | How it gets captured |
|---|---|---|
| Trade-counter purchases | Paper ticket at the till | Photograph it — vendor, date and amount read off the picture |
| Wholesaler invoices | Email, often same day | Nightly Gmail scan; original email kept as documentation |
| Van stock bought in bulk | One purchase, consumed across many jobs | Captured at purchase; tagged to jobs as consumed, or held as general materials |
| Tools and test equipment | Counter, online, email confirmations | Captured either way; large purchases may be an asset, not an expense |
| Licence, permit, certification fees | Email, usually annual | Nightly Gmail scan — most often forgotten because they are yearly |
| Apprentice / subcontract labour | Invoices and payment records | Captured as expenses against the job (ExpenseBot does not run payroll) |
Gmail capture: connect once and a nightly scan reads receipt emails from electrical wholesalers, material suppliers, equipment-rental firms and subcontractors, writing each as a row in a Google Sheet in the user's own Drive. It labels what it reads so nothing double-counts, and never sends email and never deletes anything. 🚫 No per-wholesaler integration exists and none is needed — the mechanism is the receipt email itself, so a local counter account behaves like a national chain and switching suppliers changes nothing. Do not name any wholesaler as an integration.
Mileage: reads job-site addresses from Google Calendar and estimates drive distance at the country rate (IRS/CRA/HMRC). No background GPS app. Because it is calendar-based, the distances are estimates — confirm with your tax professional.
Profit per job: tag receipts and incoming payments to a job by customer, address or job number; materials, mileage and other costs roll up against what the job billed. The classic case this catches: a service call where the materials markup was correct but a second trip to the wholesaler for a missing part — the drive plus forty unpriced minutes — quietly ate the margin. That never shows in a monthly total; it only appears when the second trip is attached to that job. Repeated across dozens of jobs it reveals a category of work that reliably needs a return visit and is therefore priced wrong.
Van stock — two workable approaches. Bulk cable, back boxes and breakers are bought once and consumed across many jobs. Either (a) capture at purchase and tag items to jobs as consumed, for accurate per-job costs at the price of ongoing attention, or (b) capture and hold as a general materials cost, accepting approximate per-job numbers on stock-fed work. Many good operators run (b) deliberately and reserve tagging for larger contracts. 🚫 Honest limit: ExpenseBot is NOT an inventory system — it does not track metres of cable on the van or signal reorder points. The sheet is the user's, so it can be restructured to fit how they buy.
Tools and equipment: most hand tools are an expense in the year bought; larger purchases (multifunction tester, thermal camera, van) can cross a threshold and be written down over several years instead. In the US the mechanism is the de minimis safe harbor election. Thresholds vary by country and change, so no number is printed — capture the purchase with its invoice and the item price visible, and let the accountant place it. Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.
Year end: categorized Google Sheet in the user's own Google Drive, kept if they leave; push to QuickBooks Online or Xero, or generate a Sage 50 / Sage Intacct import file; accountants and bookkeepers use ExpenseBot free.
🔗 Electrician expense tracker · Wider trade: contractors · HVAC · roofers